Why I’ll Never Paywall My Substack (and How I’ll Still Make Money)
Free vs Paid Subscriptions
This is my 30th year of being a serial solo. I’ve started, abandoned, grown, crashed, bought and sold over a dozen businesses since I started back in 1995.
Here’s why my Substack will never have a paywall.
I Dislike Gatekeeping
No, I don’t want to buy your course or pay you $8 a month for information that is available for free and often intentionally dated to keep us continually chasing the carrot. I figure if I dislike gatekeeping you probably do too. And you and me are who I care about it.
Generosity is Not Less Valuable Than Greed
The people who tell you that “free” means “less valuable” are probably trying to sell you a course, and they have a distorted view of true value. These are the same people who perpetuate the income/status = your-worth-as-a-human lie.
Teaching is a sacred act. I wish more creators felt that way. Your worthiness has nothing to do with your income and your gifts are yours to freely give. Stop listening to greedy fucks that want you to view your audience as cash cow.
But You Have to Make Money Somehow . . .
Yes, I do. And so do you. But we can do it ethically, lovingly and with care for people and planet. Here’s how I’ve worked it out (and tons of other successful, conscious solo creators right here on Substack.)
Teach for Free
Everything I write and make videos about is free. I show my audience step by step how I create the products and systems I build for my paying clients.
<gasp> “But, can’t people just steal your products and do it themselves?”
<sigh> Yes, that’s the point. I want them to follow along and build it themselves. . . heck, they can even turn around and sell it.
The reality is that 97% of the people reading or watching will NOT take any action at all. The 3% who do take action have options depending on their need, not mine.
My free work is for the 1% who want to dig in and build it themselves.
My templates & digital products are for the next 1% who want to be hands on but don’t have time for the learning curve, this is my steady monthly income.
And the remaining 1% don’t have time or the desire to DIY anything. They also have money to hire me to do it for them, this is my project income.
The Real Issue
The complaints about this system aren’t that it doesn’t work, it’s that it takes too much work on the front end before they see a return.
Does your business exist to meet your needs or theirs?
The answer may explain your struggle to create real value that clients actually want to pay you for. Your energy bleeds through your posh marketing and they know deep down that you’re in it for you, not them.
[I can only speak to this because I used to drink the Kool-Aid on LinkedIn too. I’m not throwing shade I didn’t already cast on myself.]
Solos are the Secret
Long term career positions are not just disappearing, those that remain are turning into ethical & spiritual wastelands.
I mentioned in the intro that this is my 30th year as a solo, for most of those years I also worked full time & raised my family. It was hit and miss. I had some big wins and huge losses, but every experience led me to where I am today.
Solo work has never been this accessible, attractive or attainable before. We’re at one of those crossroads that you’ll look back on and say, “Man, I wish I had followed through.”
What’s Your Approach?
Tell me I’m wrong, I want to hear the other side of the fence.
I use an interesting feature that automatically paywalls my content after 6 months. That way, the ones who follow me and are interacting with me on a weekly or even monthly basis get all my content for free, but I auto-paywall things over time because:
- I still have a chance to offer value with recent posts, so people see the quality and they check if they like it or not
- everything change very fast today. What is ok nowadays may not be in 6 months, better intentionally reduce the audience to fellow subscribers who support
- crawlers index it for enough time, if people find my content, they still have the choice of reading my new stuff
- I intentionally don’t want things that are very old being crawled and publicly available for free (I write on the internet for 20 years and it’s annoying to have content from 10 years ago being stolen for stupid social media accounts)
I wish Substack had a feature that perform the opposite though: paywall all my new posts and remove the paywall after certain time. That would allow people to do an opposite strategy, time based too.
Both these words, "generosity, and, greed" have the same value and power. They both bring results. When we speak these word seeds, we will harvest more than we have planted, later than we have planted and in agreement with the intentions of our planting. Some "words" will bring additional 'harvests' even years after the original planting. This is why I particularly attempt to never use certain words. words like "FREE," or "Just like having a real ... even the word "Extra" will inspire an immediate reaction in the majority of the listeners which is the antithesis of my reactions. These are all 'red flags' to my mind and I will seek to ascertain what the user is 'hiding' when they use them. I learned many years ago that in advertising the "big letters' promise you things and the 'fine print' takes everything away. So, we must help others because altruistically helping others will both give us pleasure and will come back to us.
My father had a 6th grade formal education, taught me to watch what people do and find out if their actions are in agreement with their words. He said that a man is only as good as the man's word. He taught me that a person that will take unjust advantage of others in small things will do that in big things. You do not need a piece of paper, you just need two people that will want to be generous with each other. He grew up South of the Mason-Dixon Line (born in 1924) and gave me many examples to ponder, most of which were of people from 'big' cities.
As soon as I went out to the streets of Bayamón, Puerto Rico, (after exiting the US Navy) I saw they also had many sayings that would raise a 'red flag' if the person was paying attention. One of the "Jibaro" (country person) sayings was "El que obra mal, le va mal" (It will go poorly for the man that works poorly or is miserly) However, they taught that in all aspects of your life you can apply this saying.
In addition to these things a person must remember they have to persevere, they can not quit. You wrote that 97% of the people do nothing with the information. We hear people saying that a trip of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, however in Ecclesiastes 7 we are taught that it is better the end of a thing than the beginning. One step at a time. Took me 7 years to obtain a 4 year Bachelors degree because I had more hurdles than most. I was learning the language and I was always seeking ways to earn enough to sustain our family while putting some aside to pay for university credits. The people say "poco a poco se anda lejo" (little by little you will get very far) BUT that only rewards us when we persevere and do not quit.
In conclusion, we need to make ourselves determined, and to take action and then to persevere every single day. I am awed by the quantity & quality of your generosity and I am certain you are and will continue to reap from the seeds you have both spoken and the actions you have done.
BTW - I have no understanding of what a 'paywall' or 'gate keeping' or 'substacking' is. LOL